So, as we were saying on the Metropolitan’s fifth anniversary of new ownership in September, we’ll refine the new business plan and get back to you, and then bin Laden struck and changed the world, the bastard.

For those lucky enough to survive, we take solace or find happiness in different ways and varying degrees. In business, many people are innovating and working harder because clients need or demand more. Others are innovating and working harder just looking for work because customers have gone away.

But during this pursuit of workplace happiness, let us never forget that life and liberty, which allow us to pursue our happiness, were the things spared on Sept. 11 and then given some assurance by America’s aggressive response to bin Laden’s brutality.

From multi-year systems management contracts at SAIC, to designing new menus at Indigo Grill, San Diego business people are innovating in ways that will allow us all – call us the economy – to survive and thrive again in 2002.

When we will thrive again is open to debate. Marney Cox on Page 32 and Gary London on Page 34 offer different takes, not unlike Alan Greenspan and his own Fed governor Laurence Meyer tussling over when. Timing is important, though there should be no doubt about “if.” The American economy will thrive again, and to plan for anything less, or to not plan at all, merely assures that your business will be among the last rather than among the first to benefit when the answer to “when?” is clear.

So innovate. Write or rewrite the business plan to make better sense today. If you need help, set aside the morning of Jan. 18 to hang out at the Wyndham Emerald Plaza Downtown. That’s where small businesses hit hardest by the fallout from Sept. 11 will find practical tools and advice on how to work your way out of a recession from a touring series of seminars dubbed Back on Track America, chaired by a former San Diego business journalist, Jane Applegate, now president of Small Business Television Corp. and sbtv.com in New York. Attendance, wisdom from a bevy of business, financial and marketing experts, and lunch at the Wyndham are complimentary, but you have to register by calling 1-877-728-8249. Meanwhile, check out sbtv.com or backontrackamerica.com, or the ad on Page 11.

Some of our own innovations are obvious, and some are counter-intuitive. At the San Diego Metropolitan, Uptown Examiner & Daily Business Report, we’re excited to repackage ourselves into a standard magazine size with entirely glossy paper, an upgrade that is easier to use and a little classier than last year’s model, which actually dates back to 1996. The change will allow us to maintain an audited, controlled circulation of 50,000 copies, including U.S. Postal Service delivery to the region’s best-informed CEOs, senior executives, business owners, professionals and civic leaders, while keeping our advertising rates the lowest among all the business publications in San Diego. We mean lowest on their face and significantly lower as a cost per thousand readers. And we mean 50,000 copies, which is greater than the combined circulations of the three other business publications in San Diego.

Still, in the face of a mucked-up economy, you certainly wouldn’t expect the monthly Metropolitan, to, say, double its frequency to twice a month, or quadruple to a weekly, or, don’t say it, “octiply” into a twice-weekly.

But that’s virtually what we’re doing with the renaming of the twice-weekly San Diego Uptown Examiner to become the San Diego Metropolitan, Uptown Examiner & Daily Business Report, the precise name of the monthly, effective Jan. 16. This repositioning will allow us to more thoroughly integrate our news and advertising services between the monthly and the twice-weekly. In 1998 we purchased the Uptown Examiner, now 64 years old, and continued publishing every Wednesday and Friday, quietly growing. Now, as we did five years ago with the monthly Metropolitan, we’re pushing up the circulation of the twice-weekly Metropolitan for thousands of productive San Diegans whose appetite for business news, business-to-business advertising and legal advertising is not nearly satisfied by the sorry alternatives.

And we’ll continue to operate the Daily Business Report 7/24 at sandiegometro.com and during morning and afternoon drives on XLNC1-90.7 FM, the classical music station.

To subscribe for a mere $35 a year (another deal) please call (619) 233-4060, Ext. 302, and you’ll get 12 editions of the monthly Metropolitan and 104 editions of the twice-weekly Metropolitan, both served by the most experienced team of San Diego business writers in the market, and still the only business publication entirely owned and entirely managed by longtime San Diegans.

We’ve got other innovations up our sleeve, which we’ll share later. For now, please know that we’ll also more-than-double the circulation of the North Park News to 21,000 copies effective Jan. 15 in order to thoroughly penetrate the up-and-coming inner-city neighborhoods surrounding North Park, from University Heights and Normal Heights to South Park and Golden Hill, and to better penetrate the markets already served, including Marston Hills, Morley Field and Burlingame neighborhoods.

Now a full monthly run-of-press with the Metropolitan and North Park News offers the most cost-sensitive, ambitious advertisers 80,600 copies in the hands of urbane readers even before they pass along their copies to colleagues, friends or loved ones. We think you’ll like our changes.

And still there are more opportunities for readers and advertisers by logging onto sandiegometro.com for business and civic news, and sandiego360.com for the hospitality industry and our visitors. And have you checked out mazatlan360.com to see our most recently launched “virtual city?” There will be more to come.

And more still? Fred Lewis continues his award-winning interview series with important San Diegans, “The Heart of San Diego,” primetime nightly on ITV, now on Channel 16 throughout the Time Warner and Cox Communications systems, brought to you by Roel Construction Co. and the Metropolitan. The full schedule for January is on Page 21.

So, we are not planning for the downturn, the worst of which has come and gone. We are planning for the recovery.

Here are seven lucky ways to improve your own opportunities for 2002:

1. Attend the Back on Track America seminar Jan. 18.
   
   
2. Subscribe to the Metropolitan monthly and twice-weekly and read everything your competitors read, and then read more.
   
   
3. Attend the Workforce Summit 2002, Jan. 29 at the San Diego Convention Center to help develop a regional action plan. Details are on Page 31.
   
   
4. Pop into the University of San Diego’s inaugural Kyoto Laureate Symposium Feb. 6, 7 or 8, to be inspired by five of the world’s greatest minds, winners of the Kyoto Prizes, Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prizes. A few details are on Page 9 in the story titled “No High-Tech Without Them.”
   
   
5. Nominate a deserving bi-cultural colleague for the inaugural Tijuana/San Diego 20/20 Regional Leader Awards on Page 29, and go network at the awards event April 12 with people who are enthusiastically connecting North America’s most divided economy.
   
   
6. Nominate a deserving entrepreneur, executive or professional for the YWCA’s 23rd annual Tribute to Women & Industry (TWIN) Awards on Page 13, pass out business cards at the May 30 luncheon at the San Diego Convention Center, and help raise dough for the YW’s Becky’s House for battered women.
   
   
7. If appropriate, spend a little bit on advertising in the most cost-effective place that targets hard-working, productive San Diegans serious enough to read, or spend more elsewhere and reach a smaller, less educated audience; your choice.

That’ll get you through the first half poised properly to do better in the second. Now keep on reading and get back to work, America. Thank you, San Diego.